Turistas (Unrated Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Turistas (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: Fantastic !!
Summary: 4 Stars
This film keep u in suspense all the time !!....is a good film ,very creppy!!! I recomended ...Movie Review: a Brazilian vacation gone to hell . . .
Summary: 3 Stars
Turistas (2006) is a tropical variation of the backwoods killer thriller, with a group of tourists running into horrific circumstances while vacationing in Brazil. The film has a very organic, and realistic look and feel, as much of the movie was actually shot on location in Brazil, providing a variety of looks, from beautiful beaches, waterfalls, and underwater caverns, to the mostly dank, damp, and muddy conditions in the jungle.
Passengers aboard a bus travelling along a rural road, are unexpectedly stranded, when the driver loses control, and the bus tumbles down the side of hill. Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas) is Alex, travelling with his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde, House), and her best friend Amy (Beau Garrett). After the crash they form a group with Pru (Melissa George, Alias, Grey's Anatomy), an Australian, and friends Finn (Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown) who hail from London. Finding a beach with a bar nearby, the group decide hang out and party, instead of leaving on the next bus out. It is all great fun, until after a night of heavy drinking, the group is robbed with left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Seeking help in a nearby village, the group nearly cause a riot, when Liam injures a boy. A local boy name Kiko (Agles Steib) who they met earlier at the beach, comes to their rescue, and leads them on a trek into the jungle to escape the agitated villagers. On the way to his uncle's house, Kiko shows the tourists his 'secret place', a waterfall with water filled caverns behind, and a large pool beyond. Some of the group venture into the caverns, but their fun is interrupted when Kiko injures his head taking a plunge. The group manages to find the uncle's house. They are safe for the moment, but the group is uneasy.
Later that night, Kiko's uncle Zamora (Miguel Lunardi), and men with weapons arrive via helicopter, and things suddenly take a deadly turn. Zamora is a doctor, but one with a twisted view of humanitarianism. He begins operating on his captives, intending to harvest their vital organs. Zamora explains that the 'contribution', will be a way for the gringo to give back to his people. Tied up in animal pens, some of the group manage to escape with Kiko's help. An attempt to save their friends, has disastrous results. Strangely, the survivors head back into the underwater caverns. It is not a good idea, as Zamora is waiting with a gun, at the large pool. The survivors are forced back into the caverns. Eventually they find a way out, and again Zamora is there. Unfortunately for him, his bad management skills finally catch up with him.
The entire cast does a good job, under difficult conditions. The authentic locations, and the casting of many locals, helps create an atmosphere of realism, and Turistas hangs together pretty well, up until near the end. The caves are a cool location, and the underwater scenes were no doubt challenging to shoot, but perhaps a bit too much time is spent there. The logic and geography of the caverns is something of a mystery. Why Kiko leads the survivors into the underwater caverns, when there is apparently a faster way to the large open pool travelling by foot, is a mystery. Being under falls, the caverns should be close to pitch black, and indeed when the swimmers pop up for air in the caves, it is dark, with the only light coming from a flashlight. This makes sense, but what does not is that instead of being pitch black, the underwater environment is lighted well enough so the action can be filmed. This is understandable from a practical standpoint, but it subtracts from the realism.
The DVD contains both the rated and unrated, widescreen versions of the film. Two of the movie's most shocking scenes, involve Dr. Zamora. In one, he kills a man by casually shoving a wooden skewer through his eye. The second is an operation, where he cuts open the abdomen, and removes the liver and kidneys from one of the tourists. These scenes may be too much for some to sit through, and they appear in both versions of the film. The featurette, The Bloody Truth, shows how some of the film's more graphic scenes were accomplished. Another bonus is an informative commentary track, by director John Stockwell, and producer Ken Kubena. There was some controversy regarding the film, because of the negative aspects related to tourists. However according to Stockwell and Kubena, they received a great deal of cooperation while in Brazil, and employed many locals in the making of the film.
Movie Review: I Almost don't want to visit Brazil now...almost
Summary: 3 Stars
3.5 stars. This movie was much better than I expected it to be. Most of what needs to be said has already been said but I felt that I should write up a my own review considering that I did not care for the movie Hostel as most people here have yet still enjoyed Turistas quite a bit. It has taken me about 3 years to finally get around to seeing this movie, when I originally saw previews for it I wrote it off as just another "me too" torture porn which would be forever concealed in the shadow of 'Saw', 'The Hills have Eyes' and 'Hostel'. I've been burned by plenty of other movies which took gore and torture to the extreme and once the shock value wore off I found myself in agonizing boredom. 'Wolf Creek' immediately comes to mind but Hostel is probably the personal letdown with the highest profile, other than every Saw sequel after the second installment.
Hostel bombards you with raw sexuality from the start then slaps that smile off your face with some of the most cringe worthy torture scenes I've ever seen in a movie. It is no wonder the term "Torture Porn" was coined by a reviewer after having seen Hostel because that is essentially what it is; I wouldn't be surprised if some sicko actually got his jollies off watching the torture over the sex. Hostel went from sex comedy to snuff film in the blink of an eye and though it was moderately entertaining, the movie loses it's steam pretty quickly once the shock value is gone. Like 'The Devil's Rejects', it just became boring and gross once I got used to it. It is hard for me to enjoy movies like this when superior horror flicks such as '28 Days Later' are being released at the same time and with plenty of gore of their own. The first two Saw movies have clever plot twists underneath all the bloodshed but other than those two flicks the genre is incredibly shallow and relies on spilled guts as much as the abysmal 'Star Wars' prequels relied on CGI; all style and no substance. I still have yet to see the sequel to Hostel, I'll get around to it at some point.
Now you know my background and my wariness when it comes to Saw/Hostel copycats. Too many of these flicks were just plain boring for me to watch because I had seen it all before. Turistas is a pleasant surprise! It is just as shallow in terms of character development, acting and plot as other flicks in the genre but it relies more on suspense than actual gore. For starters there is an awesome bus accident right in the beginning of the movie to get things going and the movie moves along pretty smoothly from there. You know something is going to happen and that it won't be pretty but the movie teases you and plays with you until whatever blood lust you may have had is forgotten and you stop looking forward to the inevitable carnage and start to dread it. Instead of gasping in horror, I found myself holding my breath. Those familiar with the genre may be disappointed it isn't nearly as bloody as one might expect but I personally welcomed the reliance on suspense and uncertainty as if it were an old Slasher flick from the '70s and '80s.
*** possible but very minor spoilers below ***
There is a very well done underwater chase scene as well which only added to the suspenseful nature of the film.
I seriously considered giving the movie 4 stars but stopped short because of an anticlimactic ending. I felt the movie just gave up on me instead of ending properly but this is my personal opinion. I also don't feel a great urge to watch the movie again while a true 4 star movie would have me going back to certain scenes just to catch them one more time. The girls and setting are gorgeous (it's Brazil - look out for Dark Skinned Brazillian beauty Lucy Ramos and Australian cutie Melissa George) while the sex and gore are somewhat muted in favor of suspense. I also felt that the director could have done a better job juxtaposing the violence on screen with the beautiful Brazillian scenery. One thing I definitely felt was missing from the film was a real intense one on one fight scene.
*** Spoilers done ***
I would definitely recommend this to friends and would love to watch it with a girl, it won't gross her out and might actually hold her interest as she clasps on to my arm.
Movie Review: Not nearly as bad as some have made it out to be
Summary: 3 Stars
I think it's important to acknowledge that "Turistas" is a viscerally graphic film--not nearly as graphic as the infamous Guinea Pig films but certainly more so than, say, the Friday the 13th films. As such, this film falls into a rapidly growing group of films in which graphic gore is central to the film, often, it seems, the primary reason for the film. Criticizing the film on that ground is, I think, misguided, almost as criticizing musicals for the fact that they have singing is misguided. The relevant question is: Does the movie work given its genre and aims? The answer is mixed.
The plot is fairly thin. A group of young adults survives a bus accident on a winding Brazilian road, happens upon a beach with a well-stocked bar, ends up drugged and robbed, and, for reasons the movie does explain, flees to an isolated, albeit luxurious, cabin in the Brazilian mountains. The cabin is owned by the uncle of a local, and the uncle turns out to be the brains and surgical skill behind a string of organ thefts.
There are, it must be noted, holes galore in the plot, and the characters are, as so often happens in movies like this, paper-thin. Still, the film is well acted, extraordinarily well shot, and generally suspenseful. It is not, however, frightening. Instead, the graphic nature ends up being more like a filmed autopsy. One may want to look away, but only because the gore is convincing, not because it is frightening. Even so, when one does look, the effects are extremely well done.
Where "Turistas" falls flat is precisely where the "Friday the 13th" films fall flat. The characters are so thin and the villain so preposterous that it is difficult to empathize with anyone or think that this really could happen. Maybe, just maybe, we can accept that there are organ thefts. We might also accept the film's premise that there are people who believe Americans (or Westerners in general) are so smug and selfish that they deserve to give up a kidney (or two) and a liver to help the less fortunate. But to have the nefarious doctor engage in a tendentious and pompous explanation of the good his deeds do is downright silly, especially when he is so sadistic as to keep the patient conscious during the organ removal--or at least part of it.
But here we return to the gore and the apparent raison d'etre of the film--to showcase extremely well-done effects. And here, "Turistas" succeeds. So we end up with a film in which it is difficult to empathize with the characters or care especially when they die, in which the villain is so absurd that the "it could happen" angle is all but absent, in which there is no particular depth or originality to the plot, but in which the pace (in the second half) and the effects do make the movie passable if not great.
Movie Review: Familiar Situation, Somewhat novel premise.
Summary: 3 Stars
`Turistas', written by Michael Arlen Ross and directed by John Stockwell promises to be one of the `new style' horror flicks, in the same league as `Hostel' or maybe `Descent'. I find that while the venue, the horror, and the escape may offer fresh twists, this does tend to be new wine in old skins, with all the Biblical dangers that involves.
In its simplest terms, it is another telling of the story of seemingly bright teenagers doing something colossally stupid, thereby landing them in a life-threatening situation. None of that should really give much away. Unlike the `Saw' and `Ring' franchaises, the attraction is less in what happens than in how it happens, and I will endeavor to say nothing more about this than what you may have seen in the trailer.
One thing which reduced the impact for me of the movie's better scenes is the fact that they were done in semi-darkness. Unfortunately director Stockwell is no Ridley Scott, the master of the dark ambiance (See `Alien' and `Blade Runner'). I would offer that horrific scenes in such great flicks as `Marathon Man' and `Silence of the Lambs' work just as well or even better for taking place in full light. An even better case for good lighting may be some of Stanley Kubrick's best scenes from `The Shining', where he had all the excuses in the world for doing things in the dark. While the dark may have been necessary in `The Descent', it was not necessary in `Turistas' except in two excellent series of scenes on which I will say no more.
While it is never a major requirement in B horror movies (unless your director happens to be Quentin Tarantino), the acting in this movie seems to be just a bit better than average.
My last criticism is that the movie did not milk its novel situation as well as it could have, in order to distinguish it from other movies which used the same premise, but not in the `horror' genre.
The director's commentary is always a welcome addition to any DVD. I did not, however, consider this one notably better than any other commentary; certainly not on the level of my favorites from indie director, Kevin Smith.
An interesting, somewhat original, and reasonably terrifying effort.